How are the Bajorans behind the Federation technologically?

[Yanks]

Probably because their science was blocked by the religious in power.

Of course, that lack of a period similar to the Dark Ages doesn't necessarily follow that scientific progress would have been further ahead. Sci-fi writers have used the notion that if not for the Dark Ages, we'd be five hundred to a thousand years more advanced. The lack of separation of church and state that continued on in the Byzantine Empire could still have held back scientific progress.

Well, The Bajorains began to "flourish" about 500,000 years ago. That's a LONG time... one can only assume that something had to hold them back. Look at the progress we've made in such a short time. If I remember correctly, the Bajoran first space flight was burried in history...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

So what are everybody else's thoughts on this.

Probably because their science was blocked by the religious in power. That's the impression I got with the Bajorians. Also why their acceptance into the Federation was not made until the wormhole popped up.

I don't see any evidence that Bajor's religious leaders (except maybe for Winn, but she was just one person) were anti-science....

As for the wormhole: of course that was the tipping point. Before that, Bajor's location was not strategically important, so there wasn't any rush for the Federation to make an offer.

 

[Yanks]

So what are everybody else's thoughts on this.

Probably because their science was blocked by the religious in power. That's the impression I got with the Bajorians. Also why their acceptance into the Federation was not made until the wormhole popped up.

I don't see any evidence that Bajor's religious leaders (except maybe for Winn, but she was just one person) were anti-science....

As for the wormhole: of course that was the tipping point. Before that, Bajor's location was not strategically important, so there wasn't any rush for the Federation to make an offer.

Didn't the Federation shoot down Bajor's request to be accepted into the Federation? I seem to remember Picard speaking something like that to ENS Ro.

 

[Christopher]

Probably because their science was blocked by the religious in power.

That is one very strong possibility. It's possible that Bajor never experienced anything as dramatic as the fall of the Roman Empire. The idea of the political leader and spiritual leader being the same person continued in the eastern empire while that wasn't feasible in the former western empire. In Bajor's case, a member of the Vedek Assembly can sit in on council sessions. And the Kai can serve as interim first minister and eventually assume that position permanently.

It isn't a given that science and religion are adversarial. Yes, in some cultures, entrenched elites whose power was based on religion have seen scientific progress as a threat to their power base; but there have been other cultures where religion and scientific inquiry have gone hand in hand. After all, they're both ways of trying to understand the universe.

Of course, that lack of a period similar to the Dark Ages doesn't necessarily follow that scientific progress would have been further ahead. Sci-fi writers have used the notion that if not for the Dark Ages, we'd be five hundred to a thousand years more advanced. The lack of separation of church and state that continued on in the Byzantine Empire could still have held back scientific progress.

The Dark Ages are pretty much a myth. First off, they're only alleged to have occurred in Western Europe, at a time when cultures elsewhere in the world were in periods of great dynamism, progress, and enlightenment. The knowledge of Classical Greece and Rome was never lost, because the Byzantine Empire and Islamic civilization preserved and expanded on it continuously throughout the Middle Ages.

Second, the Dark Ages never really happened in Europe either. There were plenty of scholars and monks who preserved the learning of the past and continued to explore and innovate. The Church actually worked to preserve and promote learning, founding a number of important universities.

The idea of the Dark Ages was an invention of the Italian Renaissance, during the time of the Inquisition, when the Church had become aggressively anti-intellectual and was purging books, ideas, and people that didn't conform to their narrow doctrine. So the way the historians of the day wrote about the rise of Christendom in Europe was colored by their negative view of the Church in their own time; they assumed it had always been just as hostile to learning. Also, the Renaissance scholars glorified Ancient Greece and Rome, so they were predisposed to assume that the era following those civilizations' collapse was an age of barbarism.

 

[Timo]

In all fairness, it ought to be recognized that most of the science done in the Middle Ages was junk. Perhaps no more junk than the science of antiquity, but that's arguable. What did backslide badly compared with Rome was communications: it took far more effort to get ideas moving from place to place, and the heavy machinery of universities and their scholars had to serve where more natural sharing of innovations between doers in addition to thinkers had previously been possible. It didn't help that Latin, previously lingua franca, was now the secret ritual language of the select few... Or that Europe was divided along early "national" political lines like never before.

If I remember correctly, the Bajoran first space flight was burried in history...

Not quite. We don't know if the lightsails from 800 years back were Bajor's first spacecraft. All we know is that they were not supposed to be capable of interstellar flight, which is why one of them crashing on Cardassia was not considered plausible in the modern times. Somehow, though, the legend of interstellar contact with Cardassia was born, suggesting that a few lightsails did make it back, or that their crashes were documented and the evidence got back to Bajor.

We have sailboats today, despite also having nuclear submarines, jetfoils and hovercraft. That Bajor had lightsails 800 years ago doesn't preclude them also having lightsails 80,000 years ago, or warp-capable vessels 1,800 years ago, or whatever. Indeed, since the lightsails are only good for recreation, they might be a thing going in and out of fashion.

The thing "Explorers" does suggest is that Bajor should not have been capable of interstellar contact with Cardassia by any means 800 years prior to the episode. But it doesn't categorically preclude contact at other periods of history, for example back when Cardassia wasn't Cardassian but Hebitian.

In Bajor's case, a member of the Vedek Assembly can sit in on council sessions. And the Kai can serve as interim first minister and eventually assume that position permanently.

And for all we know, the whole Council of Ministers thing is a bunch of clergymen governing the planet. After all, Sisko and Kasidy were considering getting married by a Minister!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Enterprise1981]

It isn't a given that science and religion are adversarial. Yes, in some cultures, entrenched elites whose power was based on religion have seen scientific progress as a threat to their power base...

True. We can credit the Middle East with a lot of our scientific knowledge and innovations, although not everyone would know that the way Islam is demonized these days. Hence, my counterexample of how much more intertwined religion and politics are on Bajor (i.e. Kai Winn serving as interim First Minister), which could lead society in either direction: the scientific contributions of the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire or Christian fundamentalists lobbying to outlaw the teaching of evolution.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Didn't the Federation shoot down Bajor's request to be accepted into the Federation?

No. They did mention that the Federation couldn't interfere in the Occupation (due to the Prime Directive) but IIRC there was never any mention made of Bajor wanting to join.

Until DS9, of course.

And for all we know, the whole Council of Ministers thing is a bunch of clergymen governing the planet. After all, Sisko and Kasidy were considering getting married by a Minister!

Uh, I'm fairly sure they were talking about a human minister...that is to say, a priest or reverend.

On Bajor the title of 'Minister' is strictly a civilian governmental title. Their religious officials are called Vedeks.

 

[Timo]

Uh, I'm fairly sure they were talking about a human minister...that is to say, a priest or reverend.

On Bajor the title of 'Minister' is strictly a civilian governmental title. Their religious officials are called Vedeks.

It is just as possible that they were talking about a Bajoran Minister, that is to say, priest or reverend - and that Ministers like this make up the Council of Ministers, one tier in the two-tier (three-tier? four-tier?) religious parliament also featuring the Council of Vedeks.

It might be that no civilian government exists on the thoroughly theocratic planet, and that Shakaar got to be Prime Minister only because of an oversight in the ancient laws that didn't take into account insolent post-Occupation secularists, or because Shakaar in his previous life had been a clergyman meeting the criteria.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain_Amasov]

You also can't discount the fact that the Federation is an organisation made up of hundreds of member worlds, who all may have very well had great technological progress. Once combined as one, you have quite an impressive resource with which to prgess even further at a rapid rate. Saying that, both the Romulans and the Klingons aren't exactly slouches either on the technological scale, and they're relatively monolithic societies.

 

[Timo]

It could be argued that the tech plateau reached by Earth in ENT and maintained in TOS and TNG is the sum total of the millennial achievements of the nearby (eventual UFP member) species, obtained through alliances, trade, and initially also Vulcan mediation - whereas the tech plateau of the Klingons or Romulans is the sum total of their loot from centuries of conquest of nearby cultures, and thus essentially the same. In fact, it's the one plateau that everybody in the galaxy will reach once making contact with the interstellar community, which has been stuck on the same plateau basically forever. Why innovate, when you can buy the secrets of warp drive or transporters from your neighbors? Such trading would implicitly reinforce the conviction that innovation of great things like warp or phasers is something the ancients struggled with for perhaps tens of millennia, and not something one can achieve on one's own. So one shouldn't even try.

The only ones to make a break to higher ground would be cultures deliberately separating themselves from the community in order to leave the competition behind. There's no exchange of innovations between the community and, say, Organians or their ilk, so the plateau doesn't creep up. But whenever there's enough stability to allow for rapid propagation of news (i.e. a single empire, never mind whether evil or benign, rules over vast swaths of space), a breakthrough like transwarp can result in an overall jump.

Bajor may have been part of the interstellar community since forever, or then not. The planet may have flourished in isolation for a long time before being contacted, or may have gone through numerous cycles of contact, conquest and resulting decay - both models would still be fully consistent with the idea that Bajor was an advanced city culture half a million years ago, but neither would require progress similar to Earth's.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

i haven't seen any mention of prophet influence on the Bajorans and not just in teh vague religious sense.

i mean literal direct influence.

We know they are "of Bajor", originating there. We don't know if they are kinda "ascended" Bajorans or codeveloped with them or predate them in any way. but they certainly influenced and guided them and have been present in a very real way before they created their celestial temple, banished the pagh wraiths and then retreated from the planet to exist in a completely non linear buble universe.

That should put a good spin on a humanoid civilization.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Uh, I'm fairly sure they were talking about a human minister...that is to say, a priest or reverend.

On Bajor the title of 'Minister' is strictly a civilian governmental title. Their religious officials are called Vedeks.

It is just as possible that they were talking about a Bajoran Minister, that is to say, priest or reverend

Uh, no, it's not possible at all. Didn't you hear what I just said: We know what a Bajoran religious minister is: a VEDEK.

It might be that no civilian government exists on the thoroughly theocratic planet, and that Shakaar got to be Prime Minister only because of an oversight in the ancient laws that didn't take into account insolent post-Occupation secularists, or because Shakaar in his previous life had been a clergyman meeting the criteria.

Timo Saloniemi

I think you're reaching just a tad...All we know is what we see, and every indication THAT we have seen is that Bajor's civil and religious institutions are entirely separate.

 

[-Brett-]

It is just as possible that they were talking about a Bajoran Minister, that is to say, priest or reverend - and that Ministers like this make up the Council of Ministers, one tier in the two-tier (three-tier? four-tier?) religious parliament also featuring the Council of Vedeks.

The context of that exchange makes that interpretation very unlikely, if I remember correctly.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It's pretty clear that civil and religious government are separate on Bajor from the time Winn failed to unseparate them.

It's unclear what the system was like before the Occupation, but the d'jara system implies that people were considered to have one walk in life. Civil servants and religious officials must have been considered separate d'jaras.

And by the way, in Britain the word 'Minister' is equivalent to the American 'Secretary'.

 

[Ro_Laren]

Much of what was established on TNG and DS9 suggested that the Bajoran civilization predates human civilizations by many milenia.

PICARD: They were architects and artists, builders and philosophers when humans were not yet standing erect. Now I see how history has rewarded them.

That would suggest the emergence of homo erectus as much as 1.9 million years ago. Yet, they seemingly chose to remain in their little corner of the galaxy. At some point, they achieved a limited means of space travel during Earth's 16th Century AD and eventually interstellar travel.

JARO ESSA: We are a people who brought art and architecture to countless planets. We don't deserve to be victims.

Based where humanity had progressed in terms of space travel as seen on Star Trek: Enterprise, the Bajorans achieved a 22nd Century level of technological development with regard to interstellar travel. Yet, seemingly they went no further based on Dukat's retrospective appraisal of the Bajorans at the beginning of the Occupation.

We were almost a century ahead of them in every way.

And by extension, the Federation is technologically at least a century ahead of the Bajorans.

So what are everybody else's thoughts on this.

TBH, this always annoyed me too. The writers acted like the Bajorans hit a plateau at a certain point and that it took them centuries to advance technologically in what it probably took humans one century to do (i.e. more advanced space travel).

 

[Christopher]

It is just as possible that they were talking about a Bajoran Minister, that is to say, priest or reverend - and that Ministers like this make up the Council of Ministers, one tier in the two-tier (three-tier? four-tier?) religious parliament also featuring the Council of Vedeks.

The context of that exchange makes that interpretation very unlikely, if I remember correctly.

Yes, it's a complete misreading. It's ministers in the government sense, of course -- as in a prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, etc. "Shakaar" made it quite explicit that the First Minister of Bajor is a secular ruler, that it was unprecedented for the same person to be both the secular and the spiritual leader.

"Minister" is Latin for servant or attendant. Its usage is not limited to religion.

 

[Shaka Zulu]

We can credit the Middle East with a lot of our scientific knowledge and innovations, although not everyone would know that the way Islam is demonized these days.

Part of that is because (and I'm sorry to say this, but like it as not) Islam has backslid quite a lot over the centuries to what it is now. The evidence for this has been shown in the book The Trouble With Islam Today by Irshad Manji-there's no getting around it. That shouldn't provide any excuse for racists to be like they are, but it must be acknowledged that Islam has fallen from what it used to be centuries ago.

 

[varek]

Technological evolution, like biological evolution, follows a pattern of punctuated equilibrium. Long periods of stability give way to surges of rapid progress when the environment changes to create a need for innovation. And not every set of circumstances calls for the same type of innovation.

And progress isn't always in a single direction. Societies can turn inward as well as outward -- see, for instance, Ming Dynasty China, which explored the world using fleets of the most advanced oceangoing vessels on the planet, but then abandoned exploration altogether and lost interest in the world beyond its borders, because its rulers felt they already had everything they needed. I've always taken Jaro's line to mean that Bajorans spread their civilization to the stars during an earlier space age, then retreated to their own world for millennia, then began turning outward once again. After all, modern Bajorans are a spiritual people, which suggests a focus on more inner-focused and philosophical pursuits rather than material and technological ones. (Cf. the Deltans: According to Roddenberry's TMP memos, Deltans long ago abandoned their space age when they chose to turn inward to more spiritual pursuits, and they see human starfarers as a reminder of their "primitive" past.)

Anyway, Picard's "standing erect" line cannot be taken literally, because it's based in deeply outdated assumptions about hominid evolution. Hominids were standing erect as far back as Australopithecus afarensis four million years ago -- very, very long before anything that would be called a human being. That means Picard's line is basically gibberish. If we assume he meant "before human beings evolved," that could mean anything from 500,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens diverged from H. neanderthalensis, to 200,000 years ago, when anatomically modern humans first appeared.

I agree. Perhaps the Bajorans--like the Chinese--looked around and couldn't find anyone remotely as advanced as they were, so they just went back home and became couch potatoes.

 

[VORTEX8472]

Hello everyone, this is my first post.

This is a fascinating topic, my opinion is that the Bajorans were more interested in personal growth and metaphysical enlightenment (religious pursuits); so corporeal achievements and endeavours were secondary and perhaps not generally supported beyond enhancements to basic necessities (food/clothing/homes/medicine). Remember the Wormhole Aliens (Prophets) were a heavy influence on the Bajorans and often emphasized the insignificance of corporeal matters to their Emissaries.

 

[QuarkforNagus]

Probably because their science was blocked by the religious in power.

I don't think it was necessarily as definitive as someone consciously demeaning scientific pursuits to maintain some religious status quo.

It could very well just be that children, having grown up in a society where religious figures are adored, are more likely to grow up wanting to be vedeks than physicists. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive, but their aims each require resources, and it just seems like on Bajor, the greater bulk of human resources go towards faith than towards science.

Even without the occupation, it seems like a terrible place to live.